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Apple TV comes with touch remote, Siri and dedicated tvOS App Store

Apple has finally unveiled its vision for the future of home entertainment -- the "new" Apple TV.

Announcing Apple TV on stage in San Francisco, Tim Cook listed the five components he believed were necessary to create a great television experience: powerful hardware, a modern OS, a new user experience, developer tools and an app store. "We've been working really hard and really long to bring all of these together," he said.

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A major part of the new Apple TV is the new touch remote and Siri integration. The top half of the remote has a glass touch surface that has been designed to ensure fluidity when you glide and swipe across it. You can use this for navigating through apps, but also for fast forwarding and rewinding while watching a show or film. It works via Bluetooth, comes with a built-in accelerometer and gyroscope and the battery (rechargeable via lightning connector) will last for three months, promises Apple.

A dedicated Siri button sits below the touch panel allowing you to make demands with your voice like "show me funny TV shows", and have a list appear on the screen. Siri will search across multiple apps and give you all of your viewing options on one screen. Currently Siri can search through iTunes, Netflix, Hulu, HBO and Showtime, with more apps coming soon.

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A demo on stage showed exactly how easy it is to find specific episodes of a TV show by naming individual actors. You can even use Siri while a show is playing. If you ask: "What did she say?" Siri will skip back 15 seconds and turn on the captions.

New Apple TV will come with its own operating system called tvOS, which apparently is "based on iOS and built for the living room". Apple has already been working with some big hitters from the entertainment world like Activision and Netflix to build bespoke apps, and is clearly hoping the trend will catch on. It's not just entertainment apps, however -- Zillow and Airbnb are on board too.

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"This is the future of television now," said Cook.

The 32GB model is priced at $149 (£97) and the 64GB model will cost $199 (£130).